(To the left is one of the kittens and Fidget, the Old One. To the right is Muffin meeting the kittens. Click to enlarge. These pictures were taken about 8 months (?) after Bob died.) (For photos of Bob, go here [you must have a facebook account to view the pics].)
The Story
In order to write about this, I must tell a story. Let me take you through it piece by piece, because it's a life we're talking about.
The story is mostly about Bob and Muffin, but it starts back in 2003, when we didn't yet have either of them. (You can skip down to the part about Bob's illness, or Muffin after Bob died, if you want only to read about Muffin's journey.)
Chapter One: Acquiring the Ferrets (How we got Bob & Muffin, et al.)
In 2003, I went on a speaking tour through Europe. We had two ferrets: Tut and Fidget, both brown.
A neighbor (Mike) who also owned two ferrets offered to watch our ferrets while we were gone (my two teen daughters came with me on the tour). At the end of the tour, we returned and reclaimed our two ferrets. Mike asked if we would take care of his ferrets if anything happened to him. I said, of course, anytime, not thinking much about it. I knew Mike was an alcoholic and bipolar -- he had told me so, but I didn't consider him suicidal.
However, some time the following year, Mike committed suicide. When I found out about it, I tracked down his ferrets, who had been taken by a wildlife shelter, and adopted them. We renamed these two ferrets Bob and Geezie. Poor Geezie didn't live more than a year. She had a medical condition common to ferrets but I could not afford surgery for her, which I only later learned was really the only treatment. Tut also sadly lived only a few years, succumbing to another common ferret disease.
Bob and Fidget remained and became buddies. Bob was champaigne colored.
Through this time, I had become increasingly ill myself (what was later diagnosed as trigeminal neuralgia). But it was during this time that I began to take Bob out for morning walks. I occasionally took Fidget out, too, but it was Bob who LOVED these walks the most. It was Bob's joy that started my close observations of and attachment to ferrets. As ill as I was, seeing his joy was about the only thing that made me happy. Knowing I could make him happy seemed to alleviate my pain a bit.
Chapter Two: More Ferrets!
Eventually, we moved to north central Florida. At one point, I saw a sign posted about a stray ferret. I called and said it was not mine, but if nobody called and she didn't want to keep the ferret, I'd take her in. The ferret became ours.
She was an albino and apparently she had been stray for awhile because she didn't know what ferret kibbles were (like, WHY are you feeding me THIS? I want something live!) and she was afraid of the other ferrets -- and of birds! I spent six months, about two hours every day, working with her to get her to adjust, eat, etc.
I decided -- foolishly perhaps -- to buy a baby ferret in the hopes that she would be less threatened by him. The stray (named Oompa) attacked him. So, not being willing to bring him back, I bought another baby who had been in the pet store with him. These two we named Muffin (who was the first and almost all white but with bluish black eyes -- unlike the albinos, whose eyes are red) and Zoombini (after the children's computer game; he was black with white undercoat and a white arrowhead on the back of his head).
To make a longer story less long, it was Zoombini who taught Oompa how to play again. (I say "again" because she had originally been a ferret purchased and kept domestically like most others. I knew this because she had a tatoo on her ear like all the ferrets bred by Marshall Farms. Most Marshall ferrets are well-socialized to both other ferrets and to humans.)
So, with Oompa and Zoombini (and Muffin), I would bring them onto my bed for some supervised playtime and Zoombini would go under the blankets, so she couldn't bite him; then he'd come out when she went under. Eventually she realized he was playing and she came to accept him and Muffin (who were bros).
It's odd because Zoombini is the skittish one, but he always has made friends with newbies first. Muffin (the dark-eyed white one) is a really gentle, kind ferret, but he doesn't make friends as quickly.
Chapter Three: Bob's Illness
But meantime -- and here's the crux of my story -- Bob started jumping Muffin and Muffin -- still a young lad and not as big as Bob -- would literally scream, like he was dying. Since Bob was just plopping his fat belly on top of Muffin and not biting him, I watched and only separated them if Muffin really seemed upset.
But soon thereafter, Bob became ill with pancreatic tumors. The story of his illness is long and I won't go into it here. Suffice it to say that even after all the medical treatments and surgery, Bob had to be put to sleep.
When we brought Bob to the vet that day, we brought Fidget, Muffin, and Zoombini to be there with him. Bob went to sleep gently and without pain or struggle. Fidget never seemed to notice that Bob was gone. All three surviving ferrets checked out his body after he passed. Then the vet wrapped him and we took him home to bury him in the back yard (where the ferrets often played without restraint, since it is a large, semi-wild, completely enclosed yard).
When we got home, I unwrapped Bob so the three other ferrets could smell and see him one more time. Then we buried Bob. Ferrets love to dig in dirt. Muffin is a great digger and Zoombini particularly goes wild when I dig with a shovel.
Muffin and Zoombini, therefore, helped dig the grave. Muffin was there when I covered Bob with the dirt.
Chapter Four: Muffin, After Bob Passed
The next day, Muffin would not go out into the yard. He went to the glass doors outside of which was Bob's grave, and he looked out, but he wouldn't go out.
For days, Muffin lay around the house, listless. He wouldn't play with Oompa or Zoombini. He ate massive amounts of treats -- that was all he wanted to do, eat treats.
I had never realized how close to Bob Muffin was until then.
After about a week, Muffin finally went out in the yard ... and the first thing he did was to try to bury himself under a pile of leaves.
Our yard is very leafy. Ferrets like to dig tunnels in the dirt and they like to go under things, but they don't generally bury themselves under things, and it's not like they really have the manual dexterity to do so very well.
But Muffin literally tried to get himself under the leaves ... just like he had seen happen to Bob with the dirt.
Chapter Five: My Interpretation of Muffin's Psychological Journey
When I told one of my daughters about this, she said "He wanted to be close to him."
Indeed. I think it's as simple and as complex as that.
Muffin loved Bob. His high-pitched screams had fooled me into thinking he was afraid and upset by Bob, but they were really part of his play with him.
The two looked a lot alike, too. Bob was off-white and Muffin was ivory.
(This is not the first time I've seen ferrets choose or get attached to other ferrets who look like them, by the way. It's happened a few times in my household since Bob and Muffin, one time between two dark ferrets, another time between two albinos.)
Bob was, at the time of his death, bigger than Muffin still. He was like a father figure to Muffin, in a way. He taught Muffin how to play like the big guys did.
In the week after Bob's death, Muffin seemed like he doubled in size, reaching his full length and weight.
What is amazing about all these events is that Muffin clearly was trying to find a way either to experience what had happened to Bob or to get to Bob again. Either way you look at it, Muffin realized at some point that Bob was gone forever. And it was clear that he was quite bereft.
These events and circumstances with Bob and Muffin also suggest that Muffin identified with Bob in a "psychological" way. He saw Bob as his buddy. He saw Bob as "like" him and he was trying to "be like" Bob. He was trying to put himself into the same situation as he understood Bob was in, so he could be with him or find him or be like him somehow. He was like he lost part of himself that he couldn't find a way to make up for, to replace.
Muffin's Recovery & Friendship with Gong
Muffin didn't quite get back his previous joy in life for almost a year ... until we acquired yet another stray animal... or rather animals: this time 3 male kittens (they are a gorgeous Siamese-Lynx-Tabby mix). They were so tiny when we got them. Muffin befriended them -- especially one of them named Gong (pronounced Gung -- don't ask).
Some of the ferrets would sneak up on the kittens and nip them or jump them, holding the backs of their necks with their mouths. (Ferrets do this to each other sometimes and don't hurt each other, so they might not have known it didn't feel so good for the kittens. On the other hand, they might also have been trying to tell them who was boss!)
Muffin never bites, though, and eventually Gong learned how to play with Muffin the ferret way -- jumping and rolling each other.
They chase each other at high speeds, which Muffin loves. Gong got considerably faster than Muffin as he grew, so Muffin learned to hide inside a ferret tube until Gong wasn't looking. Then Muffin would come out and pounce on Gong. Then Gong would roll Muffin and so on...
Muffin and Gong are inseparable now. Although I'm overseas at the moment, my daughter who is taking care of the pets tells me that if one of them drinks water, the other one does too. If one goes out, so does the other.
We are all on journeys our whole lives. It is amazing that ferret journeys can take years to resolve, just like ours. Even though their lives are short, it can take months or years for them to accept or love each other (or others) and months or years to overcome loss. The emotional or psychological fabric of a ferret is just as complex and nuanced as that of a human. It is only our blindness, our callousness, our separation from nature, that prevent us from seeing or knowing this.
(As an epilogue, Fidget is the sole survivor of the original group. Ferrets normally live only about 8 years. Fidget is going on 9 now. Muffin and Zoombini are about two now. The kittens are rascally teenagers, much larger than the ferrets now. We also have several other ferrets: nine in all! Someday, it will be an epic story!)
No comments:
Post a Comment